


Happy Times Baby

by merelypassingtime



Series: The Well of Lost Plots [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Phone Apps, Pre-Slash, pokelock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 05:54:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10735503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merelypassingtime/pseuds/merelypassingtime
Summary: A bored, lonely John Watson finds himself playing an app on his phone, raising a baby named Sherlock.





	Happy Times Baby

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work based on a picture I saw on Tumblr by Sasananao (http://sasananao3.tumblr.com/)  
> Sorry, I would link it directly but I am afraid I am not very technically inclined.  
> It can be read without viewing the art, but it is awfully cute.

John found the app one evening almost a month after his return to London. That night the beige walls of his dull bedsit seemed to be closing in intent on squeezing the last bit of life from him and he was desperate for any distraction even if it came in the form of flicking through the pages of apps Harry had somehow managed to load on to her phone before she passed it to him. 

The brightly colored icon of a cartoon baby wailing stood out among all the restaurant rating apps and social media shortcuts. The title was written in what looked like Japanese or Chinese characters and it was equal parts idle curiosity and unbearable boredom that caused him to tap on it. 

The screen that came up showed the same baby as the icon only now animated to cycle between crying and eating a disproportionately large lollypop. At first glance all the text was in the same foreign language as the title and he almost exited it before two small lines of English at the bottom of the screen caught his eye.

HAPPY TIMES BABY  
Raise your baby, have happy times with it!

John smiled, it seemed like the sort of thing Harry would enjoy. He still remembered the hours he had spent playing Pokemon with her as a child because none of the other children in their school had cared about the game. He tapped on the red button next to the baby, guessing it would start the game.

He was taken to another screen of incomprehensible instructions underneath which was the word 'Stats.' Apparently he had a fixed amount of points he could divide between 'Heart,' 'Mind,' and 'Body.' He tapped the bar next to 'Mind' completely filling it and using most of the points, then when he tried to drag the bar down to a lesser amount he found he could not undo the selection. With a shrug he more carefully split the points he had left between 'Heart' and 'Body' and tapped another red button. 

The next screen seemed to be one where he could customize the appearance of the baby. Now cautious that anything he added would be permanent he settled for hitting the 'Randomize' choice, ending up with an infant with a mop of dark curls and unnaturally bright blue eyes in a somewhat weirdly long face. The name Sherlock appeared to have been randomly selected as well. He shrugged at the phone, deciding that was good enough and hit the red button again.

Now he had a picture of a rather scrawny baby wrapped in a white blanket at the middle of the screen.

It took him a couple of hours to work out the general rules of the game, how to feed and burp the infant and put it down for a nap, in which time he did manage to thoroughly mess up the baby's eating and sleeping schedule. He hoped that as baby Sherlock grew that would fix itself. 

Of course there was a 'store' you could buy toys and other accessories as well, most you could pay for with the jewels you earned for playing but unfortunately it seemed clothes you could only buy with real money. John decided that the blanket was working just fine for free. Instead he used all the jewels he had earned to buy Sherlock a bumble bee plush toy. The pixelated baby beamed at him when he dragged it from the inventory bar up to the screen.

Happy Times Baby quickly became an obsession for John, and he spent hours playing, buying Sherlock books and science kits to occupy his mind while also trying his best to increase his heart and body stats. A week in, when the information at the bottom of the screen listed Sherlock as six years old and with fourteen hit points, John bought him a dog named 'Redbeard' from the store and almost doubled his heart points. 

Five days later when John was able to use the jewels all his playing had earned him to buy Sherlock into what the game called an “A+ GREAT SCHOOL” he was forced to watch in horror when Sherlock was bullied and beaten by other students for the sheet he still wore in testament to John's unwillingness to pay for any of the outfits from the store with actual currency. By the time John figured out how to distract the bullies so Sherlock could run away he was down to his last five hit points. John bought first aid supplies at the store and carefully bandaged the boy wondering all the while what kind of sick programer would have added that to their game. 

When Sherlock was recovered John brought Redbeard out of his inventory to try and cheer him up and as he sat in the center of the display with the dog in his lap John rested the tip of him pinkie gently on the screen over the boy's shoulder. The heart stat jumped up a point when he did it, surprising him.

Getting Sherlock though school was hard and John spent even more time playing. Slowly Sherlock's hit points and body stats increased until John was given the option of buying him some martial arts skills which almost stopped the bullying. The teasing about his intellect and lack of clothes continued though decreasing his heart stats regardless of the time John spent tapping the boy. John was relieved when secondary school ended with a short animation of Sherlock taking his A levels. Of course he passed with his amazing mind stats. John hope uni would be easier.

It wasn't and by Sherlock's second year there John was spending more than ten hours a day trying to keep the young man from burning down school buildings in boredom. 

Then disaster struck. On the way back from Tesco's one rainy afternoon while John was struggling to hold his groceries in his cane hand and steer Sherlock away from the beakers of acid on his phone with the other a man headed the opposite direction bumped into him causing him to drop his phone into the street, right into the water running through the gutter. Promptly he dropped to his knees, the sack full of food and his cane falling to the ground next to him as he fished the phone out of the water. He may have let out an anguished cry of “Sherlock!” as he looked down as the black screen.

He knelt there on the pavement for a couple of minutes, the rain soaking into his canvas coat and ruining his groceries before a kind man walking passed paused to ask if he was okay and to help him to his feet.

“Fell in the water did it?” the man asked as John continued to stare down at the dead phone even as he stood.

John only nodded in assent.

“Well, don't give up on it, mate. You know if you put it in a bag full of rice you can sometimes save them...” 

John looked up for the first time, “Really?”

“Oh yeah,” the man assured him. “I have done it myself. Just let it dry out for a few days before you try and charge it or turn it on again.”

John finally dropped the phone in his pocket and bend to gather up his groceries. The man helped him, ending by handing John back his cane.

Meeting the man's eyes for the first time John said, “Thanks, for the help and for the advice.”

“No problem, mate.” The man said as he walked away. “And good luck.”

John nodded again and began making his way back to the Tesco to buy rice.

When John got home and checked his laptop the consensus online was that the phone needed to be in the rice for at least forty-eight hours. To be safe he left it for the longest three days of his life, including the ones he spent in hospital after being shot. The three hours it took after that for the phone to charge fully were unadulterated agony. He held his breath as the phone started to boot up, then pretended not to have to wipe away a tear of relief when his home screen came up. Quickly he flicked through the app screens to Happy Times Baby, tapping on it urgently.

When he had gotten pass the opening screen and to Sherlock he let out a horrified gasp. Sherlock was laying prone in the middle of the screen, the sheet he still worn was grey and stained and there was a graphic of a needle sticking out of his arm. John wondered again about the sort of sick mind that designed the game while he scrolled quickly through his inventory looking for his first aid kit.

It took almost a week of constant playing and nearly all the jewels John had saved to rehabilitate Sherlock from the drugs habit he had picked up in John's three days of neglect. Slowly he recovered, his sheet returned to its pristine whiteness and Sherlock regained his interest in the items John placed around him. And if that interest was more morbid than it had been, that was okay with John. After all he was pretty morbid himself.

By the time he managed to recover the game completely Sherlock's age read as thirty-three with seventy-nine hit points. His heart and body stats still lagged significantly behind his mind stat but it was better than it had been.

He was fondly watching Sherlock lounge on a sofa he liked while randomly shooting the gun John regretted buying him when a message popped up obscuring his view. Under the line of Asian text it said in English, “Free Trial Complete! Congratulations! Play Full Version: 49 pence”

John scowled at the screen, annoyed. 

He guessed he really couldn't complain about the game or the hours of enjoyment he had gotten from it for free, however sadistic some of the elements were. It wasn't even like forty-nine pence was a lot of money, he just objected to the principle of having to pay to play. Briefly he thought about just deleting and reloading the game and starting the free trail again, maybe this time starting with more balanced stats and without dropping his phone. His heart gave a sick twist at the thought of Sherlock being deleted and before his head could object again he tap the green yes button, buying the game.

“Thanks Happy Times Player! Full Version Downloading Now!”

John watched the grey download bar for several minutes, growing dismayed as it failed to show any movement. In the end he plugged the phone into its charger and went to bed. Hopefully it would be done downloading in the morning.

It was a restless night for John, but he stubbornly refused to check the phone for the game's status. By the time he managed to fall asleep it was late and he ended up sleeping through his alarm the next morning. When he did wake up he found his hand reaching for the phone before he even opened his eyes. 

His first sight of the day was his app screen, the one that was completely lacking any icon for Happy Times Baby. John blinked and looked again, flicking through all the screens of apps in increasing desperation. The game was gone.

He was checking for the third time when the sound of a throat clearing caused him to jerk his head up towards the desk and the only seat other than the bed in the whole bedsit.

Sitting there, clad only in a white sheet, was a man with dark curly hair and unnaturally bright eyes.

It couldn't be, John thought staring at the man.

The man stared back for a moment before smiling a startlingly familiar smile. In a deep rich baritone that John could never have imagined the figure rumbled, “John.”

John swallowed dryly before managing to croak out, “Sherlock?”

He found he was returning Sherlock's grin.


End file.
